“We do not desire at all that the great masses shall become well off & independent… How could we otherwise rule over them?” 

-Austrian Government Official - Late 19th Century

British philanthropist, Robert Owen, was told the words in this quote above when he sat down with the Austrian government to talk about helping their people, many of whom were poverty stricken.^[1] Imagine if today this was spoken out loud ? In most countries voters would turn on the politician who said it. But in more dictatorial countries the saying above rings true. To keep the bulk of the population barely above poverty so they rely on the government for scraps of food, income and shelter is a time worn strategy of controlling a population.

To prevent people from rising above the ranks their already in. Best way to do that is to stifle progress but choking innovation. Even in countries which pay lip service to “capitalism” the reality is, at any moment a government can shut down a company because one of its CEO’s isn’t towing the party line. China’s example of silencing Jack Ma (co-founder of Alibaba) and one of the richest people in the world is one example, as is Russia’s treatment of Pavel Durov who made Russia’s version of Facebook and had to flee the country after it was taken over by Kremlin aligned oligarchs. 

To keep power centralised, the Dictators handbook is to limit freedoms, but in doing so innovation declines as a result and standards of living fall with it. But this is not new, it’s been the playbook throughout history. Below we will see how this is a pattern throughout history.

 

So fearful were the Austrian elite that they refused to let factories be set up in Vienna, the nation’s capital, saying that the increased population would bring revolution to their doorstep. To prevent their fears from materializing, fewer rail lines were built leading to the city centre. 

Roman history author Cullen Murphy reminds us that “the Romans looked down on entrepreneurship,” with Roman senators forbidden to engage in shipping & other kinds of trade. ^[2]

Roman author Pliny the Elder (23 AD – 79 AD), wrote about a glassmaker coming to Roman Emperor Tiberius & showing him the productive innovation of unbreakable glass. How & from what it was made was known only to the glassmaker, who asked permission to be the only one to sell it, much like getting a patent today. Instead of rewarding the man or hiring him, Tiberius had him killed in fear that his innovation would lead to a drop in the price of glass.^[3]

Thirty years later, the trend continued. Roman historian Suetonius (69AD – 122AD) tells us how Emperor Vespasian rejected an innovation which would unemploy the large number of slaves moving heavy building pillars saying, “How will it be possible for me to feed the populace?” Without work & payment, the slaves would starve & maybe revolt. 

Fast forward to 1589, & we see English Queen Elizabeth I also fearing job losses when a priest from Calverton, England, asked for a patent for his new knitting machine. Again it wasn’t unemployment that was the real fear, it was what it would lead to, a potential revolution against the power structure.^[4]

Schumpeter would point out, “The fact that Greek science had probably produced all that is necessary in order to construct a steam engine did not help the Greeks & Romans to build a steam engine.” ^[5]Like the estimated one percent of all ancient writings which have survived to this day, an equally small number of innovations succeeded in escaping entrepreneurs’ minds & being made in the real world.^[6]

The result of all this fear of innovation should make humanity kneel in shame. For it was Eratosthenes (276 BC – 195 BC), a Greek mathematician, who first calculated the circumference of the earth almost as well as those who claimed they were “first” to do so a thousand years later. It was Apollonius (262 – 190 BC) of Perga, who made the first study on conic sections 1,400 years before Johan Kepler “discovered” the same thing.^[7]

Because these old innovations of Apollonius & others were lost or destroyed, future generations had to waste centuries of time finding out again what their ancestors had already discovered. The result? The path for increased standards of living was delayed for thousands of years, as innovations long ago were stopped dead from combining with others.
 

Just imagine moving about in the 13^th century, not on a horse & cart, but on trains, then in the 15^th century moving in cars. The first moon landing happening in the 16^th century & the internet soon after that.

What if people long back around 60AD had noticed Heron of Alexandria’s discovery that by catching air puffed from a vacuum we could turn it into energy? What if we'd earlier seen that the earth was not flat, & been quicker to agree that our planet went around the sun? In human history, we see too many instances of what German writer von Goethe said, “Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.^[8]”

Strange as it may seem, the holy books of the major religions have moments of dislike for what entrepreneurs do. According to the Hadith of Islam, “Every innovation is a misguidance & every misguidance goes to Hell fire.” Sentences like this blocked many innovations in the Muslim lands for millennia. Much like Aristotle’s sentence that “Nature abhors a vacuum” put a pause on experimentation of using steam as power and how St Paul’s quote about the Divine right of Kings gave legitimacy to Monarchy.

While it’s famously known that astronomist Galileo (1564 - 1642) survived execution for his view that the earth went around the sun, it’s less known that over a thousand like-minded people were killed during this time. Domenico Scandella was killed for his belief that God was created from chaos, & Giordano Bruno was burned alive for pointing that our sun is one of many, & the earth one of many possibly inhabited planets.^[9]

Banning what is new has a long history. Eight hundred authors, printers, & booksellers were found locked up when the Bastille was stormed in 1789, during the French Revolution. Over a century later millions of intellectuals were sent to the gulags of the USSR & the concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Europe.

In 1793, the Earl Macartney was sent to China as the first representative from Britain, to show British innovations for trade, like the small handheld clocks which at the time amazed many & would one day slide around our wrists as a watch. He returned with a letter from Chinese Emperor Qianlong, saying, “We have never set much store on strange & ingenious objects.”^[10]

Yet turn the clock back to the 11^th & 12^th centuries, & we see China leading the world in the innovation of compasses, gunpowder, paper, & more. All thanks to the fairer laws under the Song Dynasty. Ironically, in this time an entrepreneur named Su Sung had made the world’s then most complex clock. Housed in a 40-foot-high tower, powered by a water wheel, it even showed the location of the planets.^[11] These good times continued until the end of the epic sea adventures of the famous Zheng He. After that the Ming dynasty in 1433 put out the Haijin edict which slowed exploration & innovation.^[12]

CONCLUSION

What can we conclude from these historical examples? The Kauffman institute has estimated that if just 30 to 60 out of the millions of enterprises grew to become worth US$1 billion, then the United States could add 1 percentage point to its yearly economic growth & double its GDP 6 years earlier than current estimates. The same applies for every nation hoping to boost its growth.^[13]

If governments did more to foster innovation, imagine for a moment not just the economic benefits as just mentioned but also the benefits to the standard of living for the people of the nation and the world. By allowing your population to innovate will not only improve people’s lives it will make a country more powerful, as seen with the United States whose Military and Intelligence agencies leverage and benefit from the numerous private sector companies who are leaders in their relevant fields. And so provide the cutting edge technologies which more controlling governments who stifle innovation will likely never find, and so resort to theft like the USSR once did and which China has recently also tried to do.

1. ^{^}

   Acemoglu, Daron, and Robinson, James. Why Nations Fail. New York: Crown Publishers, 2012. Print

2. ^{^}

   Murphy, Cullen. Are We Rome? Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2007. Print.

3. ^{^}

   Greene, Kevin. “Technological Innovation and Economic Progress in The Ancient World: M. I. Finley Re-Considered”. Economic History Review 53.1 (2000): 29-59. Web

4. ^{^}

   Wikipedia. “William Lee (Inventor)”. n.p., 2015. Web. 18 Dec. 2015.

5. ^{^}

   Swedberg, Richard. Schumpeter. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991. Print.

6. ^{^}

   Goldsworthy, Adrian Keith. Caesar. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Print

7. ^{^}

   Friedman, Milton, and Richard T Selden. Capitalism and Freedom: Problems and Prospects. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1975. Print.

8. ^{^}

   Alexandru, Ilie. Wise Words. United States: Lulu, 2013. Print

9. ^{^}

   Civilisation: The West and the Rest. London: Niall Ferguson, 2012. DVD. Lal, Deepak Enlightenment Old and New – Faith and Reason, 2014, Journal

10. ^{^}

    Gascoigne, Bamber. A Brief History of the Dynasties of China. London: Robinson, 2003. Print.

11. ^{^}

    McClellan, James E, and Dorn, Harold. Science and Technology in World History. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Print.

12. ^{^}

    Wikipedia. “Haijin”. n.p., 2015. Web. 18 Dec. 2015

13. ^{^}

    YouTube. “Kauffman Foundation”. n.p., 2015. Web. 18 Dec. 2015.